Knowledge Pervaded with the Experience of Love

Knowledge Pervaded with the Experience of Love

A Rudolf Steiner Archive Document

Single Lecture

The lecture presented here was given in Dornach on February 18, 1923,
and is the 9th of 9 lectures in the series entitled: Earthly Knowledge
and Heavenly Wisdom. It appears in the original German in Erdenwissen
und Himmelserkenntnis, Bibliographic Nr. 221, Dornach 1978. It is also
series entitled: Earthly Knowledge and Heavenly Wisdom.
The translator is Sabine H. Seiler.

A lecture by
Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, February 18, 1923
GA 221

The lecture presented here was given in Dornach on February 18, 1923,
and is the 9th of 9 lectures in the series entitled:
Earthly Knowledge and Heavenly Wisdom.
It appears in the original German in
Erdenwissen und Himmelserkenntnis,
Bibliographic Nr. 221, Dornach 1978. It is also series entitled:
Earthly Knowledge and Heavenly Wisdom.
The translator is Sabine H. Seiler.

This English edition is published in agreement with, and the kind
permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach,
Switzerland.

Copyright and all other
Rights of reproduction and translation reserved by
General Anthroposophic Society, Dornach, Switzerland.
Responsibility for the contents of the articles in
the “Anthroposophic News Sheet” attaches
only to the writers.

On many occasions
we have emphasized that the present historical moment of human
evolution is the one in which intellectual life predominates. The
epoch which has been characterized as the fourth post-Atlantean
age, as the Graeco-Roman age, was a preparation for the present
epoch. And you also know, from certain soul characteristics of
man which developed during these epochs, that we reckon the
Graeco-Roman age from the Eighth Century B.C. to the Fifteenth Century A.D. Since that time we must take into account the
epoch in which we are now living, in which the soul qualities of
western humanity must unfold, and which we look upon as the
present moment in history.

Before the
Fifteenth Century man's whole relation to the world of the
intellect was quite different from what it was later on. Since
the Fourth Century A.D. the human soul had
a certain inclination towards the intellectual life which existed
in ancient Greece and was about to set; nevertheless we find in
this second period of the fourth post-Atlantian epoch a soul mood
which can only be fully grasped if we immerse ourselves with a
feeling soul into the characteristic of the ancient Greeks,
particularly during the time which history describes in a rather
superficial way, when Greek life was beginning to evolve, and the
time of Socrates and Plato until the end of the Greek era.

From all that
shines through an external — one might say, superficial
historical description — it is possible to recognize, even
without a spiritual-scientific deepening, that when the ancient
Greek gained what we now call an intellectual world conception,
this gave him pleasure, or at least a sense of satisfaction, and
when by his intellectual power he could form a picture of the
universe, after having passed through the different stages of
learning of that time, he believed that he had risen to a higher
stage of human development. When he could grasp the world
intellectually, he believed that he was a human being in a higher
sense. During the fourth post-Atlantean age, there existed in
full measure inner joy and satisfaction derived from the life of
the intellect.

This may also be
observed in the historical characters of a subsequent epoch. For
example, the way in which John Scotus Erigena of the Ninth
Century formed and described his ideas, shows us that he believed
to have in them something which may arouse inner enthusiasm. Even
though later on a somewhat cooler form of discussion set in, we
find this soul attitude in the men who sought to gain an
intellectual picture of the world through Scholasticism, and who
were frequently alone in their striving, isolated from the rest
of the world. It was the course of development during the past
centuries which induced men to believe that by rising up to
intellectual thoughts they must lose their inner soul warmth.

But by going back
to a time which does not lie so very far back, by considering,
for example, the intellectualistic world conception still
existing in Schiller, or even to the extraordinary exact
morphology developed by Goethe, we may observe that these men
painted their picture of the world in a very marked
ideal-intellectualistic way and believed to be human beings in
the true sense of the word only if they could bring inner warmth
into their ideas. Not so very long ago, the world of ideas was
not yet described in such a pale, cold way as is so frequently
the case today.

This fact is
connected with an important law of human development. It is
connected with the fact that man himself adopted an entirely
different attitude towards the world of ideas grasped through his
intellect; it was an entirely different attitude from that of
past epochs. In earlier times, the world of ideas was linked up
with the living essence of the universe, for the universe was
looked upon as a living organism. I might say: True insight into
older forms of thinking can show us that in the past everything
dead, everything that was not alive, was really looked upon as
something which falls off from the world's living essence, and
this was thought of as being spread over the whole universe; it
fell off from it, like ashes fall off from burning substance.
Man's feeling attitude towards the universe was quite different
from his present attitude. He looked upon the universe as a
great, living organism, and its lifeless part, for example, the
whole extent of the mineral kingdom, was to him ashes falling out
of the universal processes, and these ashes were dead, because
they were nothing but the refuse of the world's living
essence.

During the past
centuries, this feeling towards the universe underwent an
essential transformation. Scientific knowledge, for example, is
now fully valued — or this was the case — only
insofar as it deals with lifeless substances and processes. In an
ever-growing measure, the longing arose to look upon everything
living only as a kind of chemical combination of lifeless
substances. The idea of spontaneous generation from lifeless
substances became prevalent.

On many occasions,
I have already mentioned the following: During the Middle Ages,
when people tried to produce the homunculus in the retort out of
certain ingredients, they never connected this with the idea of
spontaneous generation in the meaning of modern scientific
investigation, but they looked upon the homunculus as a definite
living essence conjured up from an indefinite living universe.
For they did not yet think of the universe as something lifeless,
as a mechanism. Consequently people believed in the possibility
of conjuring up a definite living essence out of an indefinite
living essence. Never did it occur to a medieval mind to connect
lifeless with living things. These things are very difficult to
grasp without the aid of spiritual science, because modern people
are accustomed to form their ideas by assuming that their
thoughts are absolutely correct and have become so perfect,
because mankind has left behind the stages of childhood.

Although people
boast of modern progress, the thoughts which they now form have
never been so rigid in the past. Indeed, this rigidity,
particularly in regard to man's cognitive power, is a subjective
element. When man turns his thoughts and ideas to lifeless
things, this is something quite passive. For he can form his
thoughts with the greatest ease and comfort; the lifeless world
does not change, and he forms his concepts of physics without
being disturbed by the fact that in approaching Nature with his
lifeless thoughts, Nature itself, with its living changing
character, demands from him to be just as living and mobile in
his thoughts.

Goethe still had
the feeling that when single phenomena had to be drawn out of the
whole extent of facts and grasped in the form of ideas, then
inwardly living thoughts are needed, not sharply outlined ones,
but thoughts conforming with the ever-changing, living form of
existence, with the ever-changing, living beings.

Expressed more
paradoxically, we may say that modern man likes thoughts which
can be formed without much effort. This tendency to rigid
thought, to thoughts with sharp outlines, can only be applied to
lifeless things, to things which do not change, so that the
thoughts themselves remain unchanged and rigid; but these rigid
thoughts, which really ignore life in the external world,
nevertheless gave man — as I have frequently described
— the inner consciousness of freedom.

Two things have
arisen through the fact that man lost life completely in the
sphere of his thoughts: One is the consciousness of freedom, the
other the possibility to apply these rigid thoughts, drawn out of
lifeless things and applicable only to lifeless things, to the
magnificent, triumphal technical achievements, based on the
realization of the rigid system of ideas.

This is one aspect
of mankind's modern development. We must grasp that man separated
himself, as it were, from the living world, he became estranged
from it. But at the same time we should also grasp the following:
If man does not wish to remain within the lifeless essence of the
world, but wishes to take into his soul the impulse of life, he
must discover the world's living essence through his own power,
whenever he faces the lifeless world.

When we go back
into ancient times, we find that each cloud formation, the
lightning coming out of the cloud, the rolling thunder, the
growing plant, etc., gave man a living essence; through
knowledge, he breathed in life, as it were, and thus he existed
in an immediate way within the world's living essence. He only
had to take in life from outside. In accordance with man's
present stage of development, which only enables him to grasp
lifeless thing in his thoughts, so that the external world no
longer gives him a living essence, he is obliged, in the present
epoch, to draw this living essence out of the innermost depths of
his own life; he himself must become alive. History cannot be
grasped theoretically, through the intellect. It would be too
monotonous. With our whole soul we should penetrate into the way
in which people experienced history during the different epochs.
We shall then discover what a great change took place in all the
pre-Grecian epochs, if I may use this expression, which
Anthroposophy traces back as far as the Atlantean age, that is to
say, as far as the Seventh and Eighth Centuries B.C. — we shall discover the great change which
took place from the time of ancient Greece until now. Let me
describe to you this change of human feeling in connection with
the universe — let me describe it to you quite objectively.
I wish to describe how this change of feeling in human souls
facing the universe appears in the light of a spiritual
conception.

When we go back
into ancient times — only faint traces of this remote past
are known to ordinary history, for in order to grasp these things
we must penetrate into them in a spiritual-scientific way,
through the methods which you have learned to know — when
we go back into ancient times, to the men of the pre-Grecian age,
for example to the Egyptian culture, the Babylonian-Chaldean
culture, or even to the ancient Persian culture, we shall find
that everywhere men had come down to the earth from a prenatal,
pre-earthly life, and that they still bore within them, as an
after-effect, all that the Gods had implanted into them during
their pre-earthly existence.

In the past, the
human being felt that he lived on the earth in a way which made
him say to himself: I am standing here on the earth, but before I
stood upon it, I lived in a soul-spiritual world, imaginatively
speaking, in a world of light. But this light continues to shine
mysteriously in my inner being. As a human being, I am, as it
were, a covering sheath for this divine light that continues to
live in me.

Man thus knew that
a divine element had come down with him to the earth. In reality,
he did not say — and this may be proved philologically
— I am now standing upon the earth, but he said: I, who am
a human being, enfold the God who came down to the earth. This is
what really lived in his consciousness.

And the farther
back we go into human evolution, the more frequently shall we
find this consciousness: I, who am a human being, enfold the God
who came down to the earth. For the divine element was manifold.
One might say: In the past, man was conscious of the fact that
the last gods of the godly hierarchy reaching down to the earth
were human beings. Those who do not distort Oriental culture in
the terrible way in which Deussen distorted it for Europe, those
who do not perceive in a superficial, external way, but in a
truly feeling manner, the state of consciousness of the ancient
Indian who felt himself at one with his Brahman whom he enfolded,
will also be able to feel what really constituted the true
essence of soul life in ancient times.

Out of this
developed the consciousness of the Father, man's attitude towards
God the Father. He felt that he was, as it were, a son of the
Gods. He did not feel this in connection with his body of flesh
and blood, but in connection with that part of his being enfolded
by his flesh and blood, though according to many people of
ancient times, these were not worthy of being the involucre of a
God. Not the human being of flesh and blood was looked upon as
divine, but that part which came from a spiritual world and
entered man's physical-earthly part, the being of flesh and
blood.

Man's religious
connection was thus felt above all in the relationship to God the
Father. In the ancient Mysteries the highest dignity, the highest
rank was that of the Father. In nearly all the Mysteries of the
Orient the candidate of initiation had to pass through seven
different stages. The first stage or degree was one of
preparation, in which he gained a soul constitution giving him a
first idea of what the Mysteries revealed to him. The subsequent
degree, up to the fourth, enabled him to have a full
understanding of his folk soul, so that he no longer felt that he
was a single human being, but the member of a whole group of men.
And by rising to the higher stages, the fifth and sixth degree,
he felt in an ever-growing measure that he was the involucre of a
divine essence. The highest degree was that of the Father. People
who had attained this stage realized in their external life and
existence this divine archetypal principle which could be
experienced by man, and which could really be brought in
connection with man. The whole external spiritual culture was
entirely in accordance with this central point of religious life:
to experience in human consciousness a relation with the creative
principle of God the Father. Everything which could be grasped by
man's inner being was experienced accordingly: Man felt that the
light of knowledge which could be kindled within him came to him
from God the Father. In his own intellect he felt the influence
of God the Father. Cults and rituals were arranged accordingly,
for they were only a reflexion of the path of knowledge which
could be followed in the Mysteries.

Then came the
Greek Age. The Greek is the most perfect representative of that
stage of human development coming out of those older soul
conditions which I have just described to you. The ancient Greek
felt that man was more than man, not only the involucre of
something divine. But this Greek feeling was of such a kind that
a person who had passed through a Greek training — let us
call it the Greek school of the intellect, or Greek art, or Greek
religious life — felt, as it were, that the divine essence
had completely identified itself with man. The ancient Greek no
longer thought that he enfolded a God, but he felt that he was
the expression of God, that he set forth a divine being. But this
truth was no longer pronounced as openly as the other truth in
older epochs. In ancient Greece this truth: As a human being,
thou art a divine being, a son of the Gods, was only revealed to
the disciple of the Mysteries at a definite stage of his
development. It was deemed impossible to describe this secret of
human evolution to people who were not adequately prepared for
it. But a Greek who had been initiated into the Mysteries knew
this truth. This explains the fundamental feeling of that epoch
was not a clearly outlined idea, but a fundamental feeling of the
soul.

We come across
this fundamental soul feeling in Greek art, which sets forth the
Gods as if they were idealized human beings. This way of setting
forth the Gods as idealized men proceeds from this fundamental
feeling. The Greek therefore took back, as it were into the
chastity of feeling, his relationship to the Divine.

When the Greek
world conception had completely set, an entirely new soul mood
came to the fore in the Fifteenth Century. No longer did the
human being feel that he enfolded a divine essence or set forth
something divine, as he experienced himself in ancient Greece,
but he felt that he was a being that had risen from less perfect
stages to the human stage and that he could only look up to a
divine essence transcending the physical world. Modern man called
into life natural science based upon this fundamental feeling,
which is, however, still unable to discover man's connection with
his own self.

It is the task of
Anthroposophy to rediscover man's connection with his own self
and the divine essence. This may be thought of as follows: Let us
transfer ourselves into the soul of a man living before the time
of ancient Greece. He will say: I enfold a divine essence. By
enwrapping it with my body of flesh and blood, I set it forth
less worthily, in a way which is not in keeping with its true
essence. I can only draw it down upon a lower level, as it were.
If I wish to set forth the divine essence purely, I must purify
myself. I have to pass through a kind of catharsis, cleanse
myself, so that the god within me may assert himself.

This is in reality
a return to the archetypal principle of the Father and it comes
to expression in many forms of past religious life, through the
fact that people thought that after death they returned to the
ancestors, to their distant forefathers. Religious life
undoubtedly reveals this trait, this tendency towards the
archetypal, creative principle of the Father. Man does not yet
feel quite at home upon the earth. And he does not yet strive
from a kind of alien position, as it were, to a transcendental
God; he rather strives to set forth man as purely as possible, in
the belief that God might then express himself through man.

In ancient Greece
life undergoes a change. Man no longer feels so closely connected
with the divine principle of the Father, as in the past. As a
human being, he feels himself intimately connected with the
divine essence, but at the same time also with the earthly one.
He lives, as it were, in equipoise between the divine and the
earthly. This is the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha takes
place. It is the epoch in which one could no longer say only:
“In the beginning was the Logos. And the Logos was with God
(by this one meant the Father-God), and the Logos was God.”
One had to say instead: “And the Word was made
Flesh.” — The Word, originally looked upon as being
one with the Father-God, was now looked upon in such a way that
it had found an abode in man, it dwelt fully in man, and man had
to seek it within himself.

The Mystery of
Golgotha met this mood which had arisen in mankind. God the
Father could never be imagined in human shape; he had to be
imagined in a purely spiritual form. Christ, the Son of God, was
imagined to be divine-human. In reality, the longing felt by the
ancient Greek, or what he set forth as an artistic realization,
reaches its human fulfillment in the event which took place in
the Mystery of Golgotha.

We should not bear
in mind details, but the essential; namely, that a divine essence
entered man, in his quality of human being living upon the
earth.

The Mystery of
Golgotha thus stands at the centre of the whole human evolution
on earth. The fact that the Mystery of Golgotha entered history
at a moment when the Greeks strove to set forth the divine in man
from an external aspect, from the aspect of the earth, as it
were, should not be considered as an historical coincidence. We
might say, and this is more than a poetical image: The Greeks had
to set forth the divine in man artistically, out of the
ingredients of the earth, and the cosmos sent down to the earth
the God who entered man, as a cosmic answer to the wonderful
question sent out into the world's spaces, as it were, by the
Greeks. In the historical development we may sense, as it were,
that with their humanly portrayed gods the Greeks addressed the
following question to the universe: Can Man become a God? And the
universe replied: God can become Man. This reply was given
through the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.

On many occasions
I have explained that it is only possible to grasp the real,
original essence of the Mystery of Golgotha by approaching it not
only with the knowledge of lifeless things applied by modern men,
but with a new living knowledge, a knowledge that is once more
pervaded with the spirit.

We thus reach the
point of saying to ourselves: Man has reached on the one hand his
consciousness of freedom, and on the other hand, with the aid of
lifeless thoughts, the technical and mechanic progress in
external culture; he cannot, however, remain standing by this
inner lifelessness. Out of his soul's own strength he must gain
the impulse of life, of something that is spiritually living;
that is to say, he must again be able to win ideas which are
inwardly alive, which do not only seize the intellect, but the
whole human being. Modern man should really attain what I have
indicated in my book on Goethe's world conception; he should once
more be able to speak not of lifeless ideas and abstractions, but
rise up to the spirituality in which he is pervaded by ideas, and
take into this sphere of ideas all the living warmth that may
gleam in his soul, the brightest light which his enthusiasm may
kindle in his soul. Man should again bring into his ideas the
whole warmth and light of his soul. Inwardly he should again be
able to carry his whole being into the spirituality of the world
of ideas. This is what we have lost in the present time.

We may say: In
modern literature there is perhaps nothing so deeply moving as
the first chapter of Nietzsche's description of Greek philosophy,
which he himself designates as “The Tragic Age of the
Greeks.” Nietzsche describes the philosophers before
Socrates: Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras — and for those
who have a real feeling and an open heart for such things, it is
deeply moving to read Nietzsche's description of how at a certain
moment of Greek life, the Greek rose up to the abstraction of
mere existence. From the manifold impressions of Nature filling
the human soul with warmth, he passed over to the pale thought of
existence.

Nietzsche says
more or less the following: It gives one a chilly feeling, as if
one entered icy regions, when an ancient Greek philosopher, for
example Parmenides, speaks of the abstract idea of the
encompassing existence. Nietzsche, who lived so completely in the
modern culture, as described to you the day before yesterday,
felt himself transferred to glacier regions.

Nietzsche failed,
just because he could only go as far as the coldness, one might
say, the glacier character, of man's world of ideas. A truly
spiritual clairvoyance can bring soul warmth and soul light into
the intellectual sphere, so that we can reach that purity of
thought, described in my
“Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,”
without becoming inwardly dried out, but filled with enthusiasm. By
abandoning the earthly warmth of the life of the senses, we can
feel in the cold regions of intellectualism the warm sun forces
of the cosmos; by abandoning the shining objects of the earth and
by experiencing inner darkness through the intellectual world of
thought, the living soul impulses, which we bring into this
darkness, can receive the Cosmic Light, after having overcome, as
it were, the earthly darkness.

Everywhere in
Nietzsche we find this longing for the cosmic light, the cosmic
warmth. He cannot reach them, and this is the true cause of his
failure. Anthroposophy would like to indicate the path leading to
a goal where we do not lose earthly warmth, earthly light, where
we preserve our keen interest in every concrete detail of earthly
life, and rise to that height of concept where the divine essence
becomes manifest in pure thought; as modern men we then no longer
feel this divine essence within us, as did the human beings of
past epochs, but we ourselves must first find the way to it, we
must go to it.

This is the mood
which truly enables us to experience the Mystery of the Holy
Ghost. And this constitutes the difference between the spiritual
life of modern and ancient man. The man of older epochs absorbed
his spirituality from every single creature in Nature. As already
explained: The cloud spoke to him of the spirit, the flower spoke
to him of the spirit. Through his own forces modern man must
animate his concepts, which have grown cold and lifeless: then he
will come to the Holy Spirit that will also enable him to see the
Mystery of Golgotha in the right way.

When we thus
pervade our ideas — let me say it quite dryly — in an
anthroposophical way with soul warmth and soul light, then we
draw something out of humanity and take it with us. For unless we
take this along, we cannot go beyond the dry, banal, abstract
character of the world of ideas. But if we rise up to a
comprehension of the world, with the aid of that knowledge which
is contained in anthroposophical books, our ideas will remain as
exact as mathematical or other scientific ideas. We do not think
in a less precise way than the chemist in his laboratory, or the
biologist in his cell; but the thoughts which we thus develop
require something which comes from the human being and
accompanies them. When an anthroposophist speaks out of
imagination and inspiration, and sound common sense really grasps
this imagination or inspiration, these confront him in the same
way in which mathematical or geometrical figures confront him in
mathematics; but the human being must bring along something, for
otherwise he does not grasp these ideas in the right way. What he
must bring with him is love.

Unless knowledge
is pervaded with love, it is not possible to grasp the truths
given by Anthroposophy; for then they remain something which has
the same value as other truths. The value is the same when, in
accordance with the ideas of some materialistic natural
scientists you state: Marsupials, human apes, ape-men and men
… or whether you say: Man consists of physical body,
etheric body, astral body, and Ego. Only the thought is
different, but not the state of mind. The soul, the state of
mind, only change when the spiritual comprehension of man within
Nature becomes an inwardly living comprehension. But there can be
no real understanding unless knowledge is accompanied by the same
feeling, the same state of mind, which also lives in love. If
knowledge is pervaded with the experience of love, this knowledge
can approach the Mystery of Golgotha. We then have not only the
naïve love for Christ, which is in itself fully justified
— as already stated, this simple, naïve love is quite
justified — but we also have a knowledge which encompasses
the whole universe and which may deepen to the comprehension of
the Mystery of Golgotha. In other words: Life in the Holy Spirit
leads to life in Christ, or to the presence of Christ, the Son of
God.

We then learn to
grasp that through the Mystery of Golgotha the Logos actually
passed over from the Father to the Son. And then the following
important truth will be revealed to us: For the men of ancient
times it was right to say: “In the beginning was the Logos.
And the Logos was with God and the Logos was a God,” but
during the Greek epoch they had to begin to say: “And the
Logos was made flesh.” Modern man should add: “And I
must seek to understand the Logos living in the flesh, by raising
my concepts and ideas and my whole comprehension of the world to
the spiritual sphere, so that I may find Christ through the Holy
Ghost, and through Christ, God the Father.”

Undoubtedly this
is not a theory, but something which can penetrate into the
direct experience of modern man, and this is the attitude towards
Christianity which grows quite naturally out of
Anthroposophy.

You see, my dear
friends, it is indeed indispensable that modern man should grasp
the necessity of treading a spiritual path. He needs it in view
of the present lifeless culture consisting in the mechanism of
modern life — which should not be despised, for, from
another aspect, it must be greatly valued. But an inner push is
needed, as it were, so that modern man may set out along this
spiritual path. And this inner push — recently I spoke of
it as a real awakening — is a development which many people
prefer to avoid. The opposition of modern people to Anthroposophy
is really due to the fact that they have not experienced this
push, this jerk, within their soul. It is uncomfortable to
experience it. For it casts us, as it were, into the vortex of
cosmic development. People would much rather remain quiet, with
their rigid sharply outlined thoughts that only turn to lifeless
thing which are not on the defensive, when the world is to be
grasped, whereas everything that is alive defends itself, moves
and tries to slip out of our thoughts, when we try to grasp it
with lifeless concepts. Modern people do not like this. They feel
it. They cloak it in all manner of other things and become quite
furious when they hear that a certain direction, coming from many
different spheres of life, calls for an entirely different way of
grasping the world.

This mood alone
explains the very peculiar things to be observed among opponents
of Anthroposophy. It suffices to mention a few recent examples,
for these can show us the strangeness of it all.

We were hit by the
great misfortune of losing our Goetheanum. We know quite well
that in spite of all efforts to built it up again, the first
Goetheanum cannot rise up again; it can only remain a memory, and
it is an immense grief for us to have to say: The Goetheanum
wished to set forth a style of art in keeping with the new
spirituality, and this style of art, which was meant to exercise
a stimulating influence has, to begin with, vanished from the
surface of the earth with the Goetheanum. When we only mention
this fact, we can feel the immense grief connected with the loss
of the Goetheanum.

Generally, in the
face of misfortune, even opponents cease to use a pitiless,
scornful language. But just the misfortune which deprived us of
the Goethanum, induced our opponents to speak all the more
scornfully and insultingly. They think that this is right: this
is so peculiar. It fitly belongs — but in an unfit way
— to the other thing mentioned above.

The
Anthroposophical Movement began as a purely positive activity. No
one was attacked — our only form of “agitation”
was to state the facts investigated by anthroposophical methods
of research and we waited patiently until the human souls that
undoubtedly exist in the present time, should come to us led by
the impulse which lived in them, in order to gain knowledge of
the truths which had to be revealed out of the spiritual world.
This was the tendency of our whole anthroposophical work; we did
not intend to agitate, to set up programs, but we simply wished
to state the facts obtained through investigation of the
spiritual world, and to wait and see in which souls there lived
the longing to know these realities.

Today there are
many people who are opponents of Anthroposophy without knowing
why; they simply follow those who lead them. But there are
nevertheless some who know quite well why they are opponents of
Anthroposophy; they know it, because they see that out of the
anthroposophical foundation come truths which call for that inner
jerk which has been characterized above. This they refuse. They
refuse it for many reasons, because these kinds of truths were
always to be preserved within more restricted circles, in order
to emerge from the rest of mankind as small groups forming a kind
of spiritual aristocracy. Consequently their hatred is directed
particularly towards that person who draws out the truths from
the spiritual world for all human beings, simply because this is
in keeping with the present age. At the same time these opponents
— I mean, the leading opponents — know that truth as
such cannot be touched, for it finds its way through the smallest
rifts in the rock, no matter what obstacles it may encounter. As
a rule, they do not therefore attack these truths: for the truths
would soon discover ways and means of ousting the foe. Observe
the opponents, indeed in our anthroposophical circles it would be
most advisable to study our opponents carefully: They renounce
attacking the truths, and lay chief stress on personal attacks,
personal insinuations, personal insults, personal calumnies. They
think that truth cannot be touched, yet it is to be driven out of
the world, and they believe that this can be done by personal
defamation. The nature of such an opposition shows how well the
leading opponents know how to proceed in order to gain the
victory, at least for the time being.

But this is
something which Anthroposophists above all should know; for there
are still many Anthroposophists who think that something may be
reached by direct discussion with the opponent. Nothing can do us
more harm than success in setting forth our truths in the form of
discussion; for people do not hate us because we say something
that is not true, but because we say the truth. And the more we
succeed in proving that we say the truth, the more they will hate
us.

Of course this
cannot prevent us from stating the truth. But it can prevent us
from being so naïve as to think that it is possible to
progress by discussion. Only positive work enables us to
progress; truth should be represented as strongly as possible, so
as to attract as many predestined souls as possible, for these
are far more numerous in the present time than is generally
assumed. These souls will find the spiritual nourishment needed
for the time when no destructive, but constructive work will have
to be done, if human development is to follow an ascending, not a
descending curve.

There is no way
out of the present chaos if we follow the materialistic path. The
only way out is to follow the spiritual path. But we can only set
out along the spiritual path if the Spirit is our guide: to
choose the Spirit as our guide, to understand how we should
choose it, this is the insight which Anthroposophists should
gain; this is what they should learn to know in the deepest
sense.